


The Face In the Mirror

by windandthestars



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Breathplay, Community: sanctuary_bingo, Episode: s04e09 Chimera, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-26
Packaged: 2017-11-08 14:08:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here in her dreams there's no need for deceit, the careful misdirects.  She tells no lies.  She has no secrets.  She's laid bare before Adam, time and again, and he shows no mercy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Face In the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Dark Adam/Helen (including choking). Mention of Helen/John. Spoilers for Chimera (and the general season 4 plot line).
> 
> For Sam because she bribes me with shiny. Also for sanctuary_bingo: Chimera.

She had, for so many months, managed to push the thought of Adam from her mind. Even as he lay dying in her infirmary she had given him little thought, preferring to focus on the current crisis instead of memories of the past. 

At Oxford, she had been more demure, more prone to worry about creating an upset, but even then she had had her vices. She had always been attracted to intelligence, not the intelligence inherent of wealth, of education- but intelligence of the more dangerous sort. Boundaries, like societal norms, were something that she had recognized the existence of but had never truly understood. She had respected them as best she could, but often she found she had overstepped them without notice.

She likes to think, now, that Adam had been one such oversight. She hadn't meant to cuckold John, to play that dangerous game. She had merely been interested in Adam, in the way he saw the world. In those days John had been sweet and attentive, and while they weren't yet officially courting, it was no secret among The Five that strong feelings existed between the pair. He doted on her and she allowed it, even began to relish it.

Her time with Adam had been different; even then there had been an element of danger. While he was sweet and caring there was a darker side to him that, like John's, had yet to be exposed. He would goad her, taunt her. Once, as they had sat in the shade of a large tree on the university grounds, he had reached over and wrapped a hand around her neck, not choking her, but fitting it there experimentally, feeling the way her pulse quickened, the way muscles and cartilage shifted as she swallowed. She'd made no comment, and their conversation had continued, but the feeling of his skin against the bare expanse of her throat had been burned into her memory for decades, centuries.

It's not until she meets Adam a second time- in his second incarnation, as the AI- that the memories begin to linger. She dreams of him, of the way her cheek had stung when he’d slapped her, the feeling of his hand pressed tight around her throat. She wonders if in some way these are his memories of before, if they haven't been perverted, twisted by his madness.

She dreams of him night after night: craves it as much as she dreads waking up cheeks stinging with tears. It's not about paying penance, she's long since come to terms with his death. She has no need for absolution, what she needs is something else entirely, a reminder, a reminder of so many things. She longs for the physicality, the pain, the reality of it and the recognition of the fact that she still feels. A reminder that she hasn’t gone numb, not yet. A reminder that despite the fact she's rationalized it all, there’s still that last pang of guilt when she sees the pain in Will's eyes day after day.

Here in her dreams there's no need for deceit, the careful misdirects. She tells no lies. She has no secrets. She's laid bare before Adam, time and again, and he shows no mercy. He grants her every desire as dark and painful as they might be. She's felt her skin blister, felt it cut, burn, and ache. She's seen darkness, seen light so bright spots had swum before her eyes.

Tonight though she sees only herself, her haggard reflection ringed in candlelight watching blankly from the mirror. Her mascara's run, her lipstick is smeared across one check, and her hair is beginning to frizz and knot from the friction, the sweat on his palms as he grasps her hair in rough fistfuls, pulling her head to the side, arcing her back as he forces her to bend, contort. He's making her watch now, see the way her face streaks with tears as she begs him. "Adam, please."

He's teasing her. He finds it fascinating how vehemently she'll beg for such a small act, for the press of his flesh against hers. 

She's desperate for him to fuck her, to tear her longing from her.

"Please," she whispers, forcing herself to look, to watch the way her mouth falls open expelling a groan as he leans into her, his lips beside her ear. He mutters nonsense, listening to her whimper, plead.

She breaks, finally, sobbing openly, head bowed toward the bed. He wants her to tell him what she wants, but she no longer can. She cries, and for a moment he's almost tender, a hand ghosting lightly over her shoulder, before it clamps roughly around her hip. She squirms, her knees dragged against the bedspread and she cries out as she feels his cock pressed into her again and again. 

It aches, the force of his thrusts, the hand on her hip, the back of her throat. She makes small gasping noises, focusing on the way her nails scrape against her palms as her fingers flex. He's laughing, as if amusing himself with an insect on a window ledge, a book on a rainy day. She knows that the hand that's come up to press against the back of her skull means that her face is pressed deep into the mattress. She knows this, but the recognition’s a distant fact. She's not making a sound, she can't. She can scarcely breathe, but she's mesmerized by the sound he's making, that broken chuckle, and the sounds their making, slick and wet, sickening.

She'll wake soon, desperate, tangled in her sheets, hands fisted in her pillow. This isn't real, and that's the horrible part, the thing he wants to hear. This isn't real, but she wants it to be.

Her head yanks back and she sucks in air, breathing it in so rapidly it makes her dizzy, her vision hazy but she knows the face in the mirror has disappeared. There's no reflection. No one to scream as she comes.


End file.
